


come to my window

by oftachancer



Series: travels in time [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Angst, Blood Magic, Branching narrative, Healing, Lyrium Ritual, M/M, Multiverse, Non-Consensual Drug Use, POV Cole, POV Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Past Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spirit Sex, Time Travel, Utter Perplexity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-27 02:16:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20752667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftachancer/pseuds/oftachancer
Summary: Welcome back to the tumultuous timestream!The first chapter of “come to my window” is a Cole POV that references events earlier in this series and also mirrors Chapter 3 of Watching You (https://archiveofourown.org/works/16328492/chapters/38231015).In addition, it comes directly after the events of Never Let Me Go (https://archiveofourown.org/works/16531853/chapters/38726912), which references the Voice-Verse created by Khirsah and delazeur. For their work - specifically the elements of their universe that I got all ink-inspired over - go read By Any Other Name (https://archiveofourown.org/works/7566736).Somehow - don't ask me - in trying to write a weaving, wobbly, wigged out time traveling story, I appear to have ended up with a lot of reference materials. Aran would be so pleased.





	1. come to my window

**Author's Note:**

> There are references here, as earlier in this series, to torture and drugs and all kinds of awful, so if that kind of thing wigs you out I would suggest skipping ahead to chapter 2, where things are a bit more tame.

**From [Never Let Me Go: Breaking Mirrors-](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16531853/chapters/44690794)**

_“This doesn’t bode well.” _

_The voice brought Aran’s head up with a snap. It couldn’t be. Not here. Not- _

_“Should have brought Varric-“ _

_He blinked. Was that- He turned slowly, carefully… and there he was. All awkward angles and jovial frankness. Cocky brogue. Nervous courage. _

_Not. Possible. _

_Was it? _

_This place… the tavern, the lake, the castle ahead… Redcliffe. It had to be. If it in any way mirrored his world then this was… and yet he’d been… Well, he’d been in a temple and then the sea. And before that, he’d been in fits and starts, snatches of memories, places, and faces. So this could be… anything. Anywhere. Anytime. Only. It had to be Redcliffe. That tavern. He was sure he recognized it. And the tower in the lake. _

_The monster of Lake Calenhad. _

_“All-Mother… I don’t know if you’re here, or if you can hear me, or if this is some kind of sick joke, but - ” Only the sounds of the laughing drunks near the shore answered him. “I am so very fucked.” _

* * *

From the tents in the courtyard, I watched them. The litany of lies took light, smoldering in the snow. A hand on an arm. Quiet words. The pain pulls- sharp and dark, like daggers, spearing through the mage’s sparkling core and leaving shadows in its wake. Not the words turning to ash, but the person behind them. Fear, pain, horror, betrayal.

Dorian is supposed to be dashing and daring, dawn for the dawn that came. The Inquisitor is carefully balanced between light and dark, still too fragile from the fall and the fall that came after. We need him to be strong, to teach others to be strong. To light the way. He can. I know. I saw shining power gleaming gilded to guide. His flame is new now; it might be bright, but too much wind, winding, whispering might whistle him away.

What they don’t understand when they whisper, wondering, worried that I am not what I seem- I know him. Solas listened when I told him so, alas, nodded wisely, thinking and tinkering. But it doesn’t matter if they know or believe. What is... is. I know we have a purpose. People to help. And beyond these walls, more people will be helped if I am with Aran Trevelyan - the last and lost, the one who asks and listens - than without. We are the same and not. We take the pain into ourselves. Pain is not easy to carry. We solve riddles that harm and hamper. Riddles can be difficult, too.

So I am secret, then, and follow faintly, feeling the mage’s need for privacy. Aran always manages to pass through the boundaries others put up for their solitude; he doesn’t take space but donates room to breathe. And Dorian- flash, and gleam, warm and hesitant. Hesitating. Hiding hesitation behind color and spark. No darkness there, not like the Inquisitor, but dim. Dampened. That shouldn’t be. He has to be fire and sparkling things to keep the Inquisitor in the light with him. Doesn’t he?

The red cliffed town is ragged memories - Blights and banners and bindings. But it is soft, too, with hope. Laughter.

They linger in lamplight in front of the tavern - glitter and moongleam. I like watching them twist and test, but there… something else. Something - past the tavern’s entrance, beneath evening’s blanket of shadow between the trees, huddled against the bark, there are familiar unfamiliar eyes peering, leering, leaking, speaking. The creature is splinters and shards, blinding bright in endless infinite. Furs and borrowed armor over scars and horror. A face I have just seen mirrored in Dorian’s eyes. A face I haven’t seen for a decade. No- whispers whistling through the wreckage, but not the Whisperer. Not yet.

_Is that him? _

I know the sound of him, brogue and brash, but he is broken now - tangled thoughts tearing.

_Gods, he looks the same, but memory lies- Time lies-_

Piece by piece. Drip by dripping drop. Puzzles within puzzles. That lost and knowing gaze tracks, seeks, locks on to the lower story window and follows with form to watch and wait.

_Beautiful. He’s fucking beautiful. And alive, viscerally. Alive and here - only twenty feet away, if that. Tangible. Touchable. Breathable. And that- can that be me? Was I ever that- no. Another broken mirror. Another not quite. Impossible-_

Hateful harm. He shudders, seeking, seeing shadows. Hears the name that fuels him, fills him - Dorian - but it is_ darkness dropping. Similar not same yet the syrup drips, drips, drips like venom into his ears. _

_‘Grasping at what belongs to your betters.’ _

His nails dig into the windowsill, wood splintering. Splinters into splinters.

Aran and not Aran. Not like when the shadow rode him. Not a creature inside breaking out. He is the creature breaking in. Parts and patchwork, fickle Fade fractals fragmenting. Time. It bends around and through him, making up the silk threads that snake and seize. Godbound and lyrium-lit, eyes lost to impossible mountains. Aran and not Aran. He creeps, creaking.

_My name! That’s my name! My heart! Mine! Can’t let them take it. Quicksilver. No, Hale. No. Aran. Aran. Brother, son, heralded- fuck. Names have power. Names are- what-what-what- _

He can’t focus on the room inside. Can only focus on his skin and scars and the memory of the hard table and the unfamiliar ceiling: those sights behind his eyes are pulling, prying, and he can’t drag his gaze away from them.

_Past or future. Neither? Never. Never again. Trick of the Fade, wasn’t it always? _

He presses his face to the rough-hewn exterior of the tavern like a lover. Touch. He always touches things to think. But thinking makes him scream now, the screeching scratching sound echoing down into his throat as he swallows the sandpaper like brandy, burning. Clinging to the windowsill like the spider and the fly. His muscles ache from tension.

_Tanning the leather just a few days ago. Swimming that morning in the seas of his homeland.__‘You’re a long way from home, Free Marcher,’ _venomous liquid lilting in his mind. _The scent of baked copper filling his mouth, throat, nose- ‘To think they’d arrest someone like you for buggery, of all things.’_

He coils beneath the window, folding into his fractals.

_Shit, shit, shit. _

Bound, brittle, breaking- He wants to scream; he can’t draw breath. His muscles seize - stone. Pins and needles. The agony of stillness.

_The smile is a dragon- hateful, self-satisfied, too thin. ‘Be a good lad and swallow.’ _

_-cold, sold, thick gold._ _‘For your trouble,’ Dorian in the dark. A kiss. A closing door. _

_-he feels the steel stealing, sliding, gliding, in and out, sticky with the shifting, drifting dregs of the Fade._

_You think you want to drown and dive, _I tell his muddled mind. Regret the remembered darkness.

_More cold, more fucking pain_.

_Enough. _

_Enough. _

“Enough,” he snarls.

_T_ _hat vile smile- _

_he dips and weaves- _

_pure lightning pours liquified down his throat. _

“Enough,” whispers, weaker, strapped and wrapped in rings of wrong. He can move now, can’t he? Well-used blades at his thighs and waist. The friendly feel of steel.

_The same and not at all, _I see him. Know. He is neither Inquisitor nor Whisperer. New. Nicked and naked nerve-endings. All raw. _Ahead. You think you’re lost, but I can find you. _

“Fuck off,” my fractal friend hisses.

_Crystalline bells singing, stringing, stinging. Power in his veins. Opening. _

_Open _

_open open _

_open- _

_slip, slide, and slice, _

_peeling his flesh like the skin of an orange, bearable and terrible. _

_Blood like ripe juice sluices, smeared with silvery threads. _

_Mercury. Quicksilver. _

_‘This is the work of His hands.’ _

_He can feel the pleasure build, expand, lapping like growing tides. _

_Gentle. _

_Gentle, until it tears at him, teeth and heat and nails rending him fleshless. _

His snow-capped head lowers slowly, shoulders dropping down and back, blades in his hands. Cold, hard, welcome weight. Sharp to the touch. Clean steel. He has to make it stop. All of it. Fucking Tevinter. Fucking Halward. Fucking Danarius- He gags, gasps, heaves bile even as he thinks the name.

The slide of a stool’s legs against the wood floor, boots coming towards the window. Can’t- I am there in thought, form, standing between the past and future, “There are lights.”

The Inquisitor pauses mid-step, half-laughing. “Cole? What are you doing here?”

“By the water, there are lights and laughter.” I am only half-there. I listen to the shadow in the shadows.

_The lilting voice from inside his head only moments before. Cole. He knows that voice. That name. Knew? _

_Guiding him through the frozen tunnels, moving through him like a breeze to warm and ward. _

_Wanted. Watched. Haunted. _

“I haven’t thanked you yet, have I?” the Inquisitor asks, gilded and guileless.

“You hurt,” I am distracted. “I stopped it.”

“You did,” the doppelganger laughs. “You really did.”

“Go now.”

“I know better than to ignore you, but Dorian’s upstairs. I’m not going to leave him.”

“Leave with him. Learn and live.”

“You’re becoming my fairy godmother, you know that, right?”

The fractal fractures. I feel it- shards splintering, wintering cold and frozen. Feral features loom up and through the window. Fade-eyes wild beneath the fox fur hood. Unkempt white hair curling past gaunt cheeks. Too slow, the Inquisitor sees his moonlit shadow and reaches for his blade.

_Unpracticed. Undisciplined. _

The wild one presses his advantage, covering his doppelganger’s mouth, pressing the sharp line of his curved dagger to that unmarred throat. He holds himself hostage.

“I’ll stop you.” I reach, wringing outrage. He knows me. He’s forgotten that he’s the one who remembers.

_Skin prickles, flesh tightens. ‘I’ll take you.’ _

_He holds his breath, waiting, wondering, wishing. 'Let me in.' A hand like gentle lightning. _

_Warm wind filling him, lifting him, carrying him forward. _

I am comfort and desire. I am… lost as he is lost. I have a mind for misery, called by my calling. And this is… different. New. To him, I am not the comfort of compassion or desire for deliverance. I am not what I do, I… _am_. Fog and incomprehensible fervor, fever…

“You don’t know-” he hisses - seawind through sawgrass - “You haven’t seen. This is better. This can save us.”

“No.” He knew my name. He remembered. I heard him hurting, herded him, halting, hating… he knew me without knowing me. We are the same. We are not the same at all.

The Inquisitor struggles in his shadow’s grip, his shouts muffled by leather and pressure. “Shut up,” he snarls against the familiar ear. “You don’t understand, but I’m doing you a favor. I can end this here. Keep us _here_. I can let us die happy. I can end _everything- _”

He gasps when I clasp, grasp him from the side, unseen. I spill his shards on the floor, collect them to me like the precious things that they are. Keys. Puzzle pieces. “Remember-” I tell him, and he does.

_Sliding through him, warm wind sweeping through his organs, his muscles, his skin; _

_he feels like a kite, so much cloth stretched on an endless summer wind. _

_A low moan as he feels fluttering lungs shifting beside and inside his own, _

_a second heartbeat beating too fast… or was that his own? _

_Possession? If it’s like this, I don’t care- _

“Cole-” the Inquisitor glanced back towards the stairs at the sound of footsteps. “What-”

“Forget,” I tell him and I don’t look back. In front of me, there is a wild storm of Fade and finding, feeling, ferreting out the memories of me from those fractured halls. They resonate between gold and moonlight; the same mind, one cracked and one complete.

The Inquisitor, soon gone, blond and blue and bashful. He blinks at the blade in his hand in surprise, wandering back to the stool he had perched on to idly dance the dagger on the back of his hand.

“We can go now,” Dorian tells him, lost in thought, walking to and through the door. The leader sheaths his blade and follows.

Surreal, one leaving without their shadow. I kneel, peer and prod.

_Overlapping, shifting and imperfect. Summer breeze hands. Eyes like the midday sky. _

Surreal, this shadow that has been shadowing me. He wheezes, his gaze traveling to the stairs, the ceiling. He still has his daggers. He won’t let them go.

“No.” I peel the fur away to find the face. Furious. Fadeswept. “Let me in.” I open his collar and he is stung, still, humming like a strummed string. I trace the scar-dark handprint at his throat, flickers of fear and fire. Warmth. Touch. Acceptance. Forgiveness. It presses into and through him, and there isn’t space within for the cold any longer.

Heat, though. Heat he still has plenty of. “You know what he did,” breathless, unbound, the fire fixates him; he points the tip of his blade to the ceiling.

“To Dorian,” he is the tide he is afraid of. “What he would have, might have, didn't. Not here. Not to him. Not to you. Not- _Teeth chattering with energy- heart racing- melting, melding with darkness- the lights lead you astray- ‘This is the work of His hands.’ She is more beautiful than you could imagine- freezing heat and molten ice- _You think wrong again.”

“_You _think wrong,” he snarls. “You _heard _them. He’s a fucking blood mage. He deserves to die. They all deserve to die.”

“Forget,” if it is the only way. My fingers find his forehead.

“No!” He buzzes like a flurry of bees, his mind a humming hive of hate.

_Memory, light and sound, flashes of color and seizing, sickening pain- need- free. Release. Out. _

The walls are splashed with flickering green light; his palm buckles. Power presses, pushes me away.

“Forget.” The pain inside him is heavy and dense- molasses mud molding. He wants free of it. I feel that he needs to be free- but he fights me. Flees.

“I’ll protect them. All of them. Him. Even if it makes him hate me, I will.” He struggles- first to his knees, then his feet, ignoring the jarring pain in his bones, in his head, as he runs for the stairs.

“Forget!” I demand this time instead of asking. “Aran, let me in. Let me-”

I wanted him to face me, feel me, forget and soothe the storm. But he looks with Fadelight shining, fading to blue out of true silver. “**_You_ let _me_** **in**,” he tells me. Fells me.

I do. _Possible impossible. _He is there, thick and quick, filling and spilling through thoroughly- _You knew my name. You- Pleading, pressure- prying light out of the darkness. I came when he called, crying, caught. I couldn’t help. I tried. I couldn’t- wasting, wishing, why why-why- Innocent. He was innocent and I couldn’t help. They _hurt _him. They tried to hurt me. You took me, shook me, and I wanted to help you. There was light there: hope - the rarest - warming everything around you. I wanted to help. Be bright. Bring brightness with me. I felt it from the tower, from the storms, and I followed, fueled, had to find- there. You. I was forgotten and you remembered. You saw and sought. Looked upon with longing. So many little hurts. So many terrible ones. They blur and blend. Different. Different then. Different than, in the dark, in blood and battle, bruised battered broken. Different now, close and far; I can see the path. You’re _not _alone. You’re here. You’re with me. I can help, if you let me. Let me. I hear your pain and I will answer it, but you have to let me. _Trapped. _Trapped like the boy Cole. Trapped by the man I was trying to protect. Trapped inside me, inside the world of edges and walls. Almost like the Fade, feeling through the fabric, far and fickle. _And it is… anathema. Impossible and horrifying. I am not free or me, and I cannot look from the mirror of those eyes- not Fade, not nearly, and not nice or neat, but wild, weary. _You said you wouldn’t hurt me. You said you might forget. _

We wind surrounded, drowned by bindings and betrayal. Terror trips between us, resonating and rebounding. Memories melding, blending in a slow, awful storm. Turbulent and torturous, but there is… light… there too. Light in us both. Warmth where there should be none.

Without explanation.

Without precedent.

Hope.

“Well, well, what have we here?” Halward’s voice slides through our mixed mind, restless fury spiraling in its wake.

He tears himself from me, tries, tangled, and I, all unbound, attend; Fadelight flashing from him to blind and balk, green and gleaming. He pours forward; Halward Pavus’ back cracks against the stairs. Growling, he knocks the staff aside, pinning both the mage’s arms to the floor. “Was it fun?” Spiteful. “Having him at your mercy?” Sneering.

“Who- I didn’t- I never-” he lies, lying prone, baffled.

“He trusted you and you betrayed him. Did you practice on your servants? On prisoners?” Agony. Rust. “Or were you just going to wing it, tear his mind apart with your fucking lyrium ritual and see- what- happened?” He smashes his forehead into the other man’s face, crushing, blood smearing their faces. Painted pain.

“I didn’t want to-”

“Didn’t you,” he pulls his collar back to show the flow of pulsing lyrium within his flesh. It glows like starlight, moves like liquor, stings like venom. He is becoming it and doesn’t know. “Didn’t you want to see what you could do? Another little Void-damned experiment. Didn’t you want to fill him with poison so that it spilled, spoiled, and made him the monster you yearned for?”

“Demon-” Halward whispers, and he is not wrong. He is not right. He is human. Flawed. They both are. Mostly.

“I am _Hale Mythal’enaste Eolas’esayelan, _you piece of shit,” blue mist seeps from Aran’s skin, soaking, startling, stolen from his starlight gaze, “I am the guardian of guardians, shield of the protector, fox and finder, and you are the rat whose neck I’ll break first.”

His blade arcs like the moon, but it is my hand that brings it down - into the wood of the stair just beside Halward’s face. “**_Go now. Don't come back. Forget._ **”

Halward hears me, heeds me, and hurries from the haunted tavern.

It isn’t possible to keep Aran still, so I run with him, within him. Away. An empty room. A closed door. His rage resonating through us both.

It is tempting - that deep well of darkness, that ancient ruthless yearning for reprisal - but I can’t. Cast my body boldly against the door, blades free, wary. “You told me revenge wouldn’t save me. It won’t save you either.”

“That monster-”

“Hate makes the monster in you.”

Aran stutters, stumbles, stares.

“You said you wouldn’t bind me. ‘_Stay, say you will, you don’t know me but I need you. We all do.’ _I was forgotten but you remembered. You knew his name. You knew mine. Now you’ve forgotten both.”

“Cole…” he whispers, wishing. Wants. But he is in his own tide, biding time, and what is remembered must surface like driftwood. He can’t think. He sinks.

_Her touch is gossamer. Thrilling. Killing. A warm pulse through his blood bones body- reassembled. _

_Tight and aching. Ah, Void and damnation, his skin starves. _

_‘Close your eyes, don’t you trust me?’ _

_Pleasure drags ragged nails across him, peeling purifying- glory wonder awe sweat heat yearning learning craving touch- _

_he wants so much- it laps more of him with every singing wave- _

_gentle, gentle as it tears- teeth and heat and nails rending him fleshless- _

_He is too hot, too hard - Fade-etched - _

_he is cloth billowing, a kite in flight- _

_he fumbles, aching. _

_Not enough. Never. Need. Greed. _

_Feed. _

_He stretches, skin shivering, _

_his hand on himself hot, and good, and not enough. _

_His muscles burn, mind churns- _

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-”

His torment is tenderness. I take the shaking hand and grasp fast, past the doubt. It is calloused, damp and cramped, flexing. It is… fine. Astonishing. He whines in his throat, clutching my fingers to keep afloat.

“Please.”

It is a hand, only a hand, but brand new. Now. Needed. Necessary. He is shivering sand and stars in the mirrored sea. Seeing me. _You are with me, _I tell him when his eyes fade, frost, falter. I touch the sunlight in his memory, summon the songs and subtle contentment. And because he is a kite stretched thin, I phase again, what he thinks of as wind. Fill. Still. Reprise the rising summer breezes on the modest dinghy, the silvery fish beneath the shivering surface, the salt spray and scent of simple solitude.

I have walked within him before, waded waiting. But this Aran is a prism of dynamism, making solid what should be insubstantial, and I can feel his muscles untense, tended, one by one, wondrous and wondering, verging and merging with my signified form. Simmering.

He is breathless again, lungs fluttering alongside mine. Full and firming. He thinks my name, the name of the boy. His toes flex alongside mine.

It is… elasticity and equity. Edges that mean endlessness. Sore muscles- hungering flesh- the groan of an unfilled belly- the flex of lungs filling with air, sudden and marvelous. Need. Every inch and segment starving for something. Food. Water. Air. Touch. Earth. Sea. Sky. And to each of these, I am the answer.

Startled, I step when he stands, emerging as the gasp he draws.

“Cole...” I do not need to look to know he reaches, fingers like reeds.

He doesn’t want me to alleviate the aches in his heart, his mind, his scars within and without. He just… wants.

Me.

It is… possible impossible?

“Can you take me away from here?” he asks, fearing that he has done too much for forgiveness. "I- Cole, I'm- not-"

I stretch my hand back, not daring to look at him, and find the reeds resting in the restless waters between us. Tangle. Twist.

He exhales, and it is his wind that moves me forward, stretched like a kite, into the night.


	2. beside the light

He is leaning, listing, listening to the leftovers of those who have come before him. 

Not far from here, people scream over a pool of blood on the steps leading to Skyhold’s main hall. Dorian stares, silent and shaken. Varric searches for the right words. Leliana holds Cassandra - for comfort or prevention of wrath, maybe both. ‘He would want us to keep going,’ she says, though her heart is breaking. 

The man they believe they’ve lost is here, in a little boat, fishing, wishing he could be there with them. With him. Not knowing that they are who he hopes they are. Not knowing he is home. He can’t. Not yet. He’s told me as much. 

He doesn’t remember. 

But he remembers me.

And he leans. Away from me, but still here. Reliant. He cannot hear their wailing. Does not know that they grieve for him. He shivers, remembering heat that scored him inside and out and left the brand of his lover’s hand at his throat. _Better to keep my distance, focus on-_ _gods, I almost killed his Void-taken father, for fuck’s sake- myself and getting myself in order. The prophecy. The memories._ _Impossibly large cornflower blue eyes like bruised petals peering askance from the shade._ Aran winds the line around his finger, starting to reel in as he feels it tighten. “Something wrong?” 

I meet his concerned gaze. “It feels empty, but it’s full.”

“The sea?”

“Life.” 

Aran smiles sideways, sadly, “I guess there aren’t many people for you to help out here.”

“Too many,” I disagree.

He focuses on drawing in his line. He knows what I mean. He wishes he didn’t. This fish is small, but good enough. Between the rabbits from the morning and the fish from the last hours, he can eat for at least another few days. I spear the caught fish in the head, quick and efficient, and add it to the others in the boiled leather sack.

“Ready to head back?”

I turn towards the craggy cliffs, the hills leading to mountains beyond it. And beyond those… Grief. He is not the Whisperer. Not yet. Now, he is only whispered to. “Hiding isn’t helping.”

“I know that, Cole,” he sighs, “I’m just… I think that I might still - you know - try to murder someone. If it hadn’t been for you- Until I get a handle on these memories, I’m dangerous.”

“You’re supposed to be dangerous.”

“On purpose, though. I don’t want to hurt anyone by accident.”

“You hurt me.”

“Anyone else.”  _ Studious avoidance. Quiet meditation. Walks in the woods and hunting and fishing, touching the trees, listening to the whispers, offering his sanguine service to his lost mistress. The wary trek to the coastlands east of Amaranthine. He hadn’t thought it was over or forgotten, not by a long shot, but still. He’d been lulled by the quiet companionship. He’d felt the sting - the terror of entrapment and - in that moment - he hadn’t cared. ‘Only a spirit,’ the whispers had shrugged off his concerns. ‘In the way,’ his own rage-fueled frenzy had snarled. _ “I’m sorry,” he said. It was both unnecessary and true.

“I know what you know,” I tell him.

_ Well, that’s fucking awful. _ Aran cleared his throat, “Look… I’m… a mess.”

“I know.”

Aran’s laugh catches us both off guard. “Right. What I mean to say is… I’m not even sure who I am. I mean, I can see parts of who I was, I think. If those are  _ my _ memories- And I know what you’ve told me.”

I could tell him more. Tell his twisting tale, threading and thrumming. Touch his tender tongue, breathe his breeze into me. Time is tangled. This is temporary, Trevelyan, I could say. I have seen what you become and it is more wonderful and terrible than you can imagine. I watch him, wondering. 

“What I’ve let you tell me,” he temporizes, taking my silence for disapproval. “But I didn’t even know that I could  _ do _ … what I did to you. If I’d- fuck, I don’t know. I might have anyway; I was - am - three holes shy of a bucket. That’s not an excuse. I just-“ He picks up the oars and starts us back towards the shore. “Is there anything I can do to make this right?”

“Don’t do it again.”

“Good. I agree. Done.”

“Walls around what they are, making them monsters. Demons,” I tug at my clothes uselessly, “ _ Around _ . But you were  _ inside _ .”

“I know.”

“You could hear me the way that I can hear you.”

Aran frowns, “I don’t know that that’s true.”

“I felt it. Your fingers scratching at the edges, prying and peeling,” I whisper. But not now. He’s closed off now. Forced his doors and windows closed, barred and latched and shuttered. 

“I’m sorry-“

“Why?”

Aran hangs his head, oars slowing, “I don’t- I don’t know why I did it. Or  _ how- _ impulse, I guess, I don’t remember thinking it through-“

“No. Why are you sorry for looking?”

“Because it was a fucking invasion, Cole- I hurt you.”

“Not that. Not the looking. The stillness.” If he could only look again, he would see that. And perhaps also everything else. “You made it all…  _ seizing, can’t move, can’t breathe, make it stop, make it stop _ \- the way you felt. Not changing me, only... preventing.”

“I’m  _ sorry _ . I don’t want to- I swear, I’ll never do it again.”

“You have to let me do what I do.”

“I know.” Sun shines, swells, shimmering sea across his pale skin.

“Hiding isn’t helping.”

“I know! Void and damnation-“ 

“I help the hurting. That is all I do. Am. Was. Me.” I wait, wade to draw the boat ashore, the salt water lapping around my knees, “Isn’t it?”

Aran swallows. Splashes. Shoves the dingy into sand. “What do you want me to say?”

“What you think.”

“I think… that you do more than that, Cole.”

“What else?”

“You… I don’t know. You’re… you.”

“Yes.”

“I mean, you’re… you know… a person. You think things. Want things, I think, beyond just helping. I mean, you’re here. You’re Cole. Being Cole isn’t specifically a part of helping anyone. It’s something you chose. Didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So- That.”

He isn’t saying it. Words are wrong, usually, but I want them.  _ I _ want them. “...I am not a dervish.”

“What?”

That wasn’t right. I try again, “I am not wind.”

“I… can see that.”

He is leaning again, listening again, wishing he could hear what I am thinking. He could. But he won’t. Mustn’t. “You hurt, always.”

Aran blinked. “Ah… really? Well, that’s… got to be tiring for you?”

“No.” I dip my fingers into the shallows. His pupils dilate, deepen. He is full of life, hidden from the heavens. “I fix one thing, and there’s always something else. What should heal the hurt also deepens the darkening.”

He pauses, perplexed. “You’re the expert.”

“...You miss him.”

“You’re talking about Dorian again, and I thought we agreed not to do that.”

“ _ You _ agreed.”

Aran sighs again, soft and steady, “Look, it’s- that kind of feeling, it’s just… how people are, Cole. Sometimes reality has to catch up to what we feel.”

“What do you feel?”

“I thought you knew what I know.”

The droplets drip down into the dark. I can take those single swells and bring them light, but they return to the sea and disappear, losing themselves as soon as they touch. “I do,” I tell him after a time. “The hurt comes easiest. Fear, regret, concern. The pain when you use the anchor. The agony of remembrance. Those are clear. There are other things that I saw when you opened.”

He shudders, shimmering with shame. “Okay,” Aran watches the ripples disappear into the breakers. 

“I want to understand.”

“I guess that answers your question about yourself, then.” He takes up the oars and ties them into the boat, collects the sack of seafood.  _ Smoke the fish,  _ he thinks.  _ Cook the rabbit. Dry the skins. Save the scales. Make a list. Check the notes. Add to the notes. More memories of Neriel. More stolen moonlight hunts with Sorrow and Grief. More _ -

“I won’t hurt you,” I promise. “I want to help.”

“Aye, that’s… rather the bloody conundrum.”  _ Confusion clouding cornflowers. Cloud-caught. Calm colors calling. Fuck, I’ve been spending too much time with Cole. _ “Listen, you… you think that helping is all that you are and I’ve seen you- if memory serves, I think I’ve seen you put yourself in harm’s way more than once while doing just that: helping someone else. You don’t think of yourself. Which is great- That’s- fuck, I mean, that’s inspiring. That’s what I aspire to. A lot of people do, I bet. But also, it makes it… tricky. To figure out whether you actually want something, or whether you want something just because you think it will help someone else. And that’s… not great. So- you’re important. And I-” He laughs despite himself, “I want to help you. Alright? Figure out who you are. What you want. Not- influence you. Does this make any sense?”

I smile and I watch him widen with it.  _ Wondrous: a sun-peeking-through-clouds kind of smile, small and brighter than it possibly could have been. _ “Yes.”

”Great,” he breathes. “So. Let’s get back and smoke some fish.”

“Hiding isn’t-”

“I know, Cole, I know. I’m working on it, alright?”

I subside into silence. Smell the sea. Slip my smile into my pocket.  _ I’ll get there,  _ he promises silently, afraid to admit it aloud.  _ I can become someone better- good- whole. I just need the time and peace to do it.  _

I think of the cave full of secrets. The people he doesn’t know that he knows. The parts of himself he hasn’t yet seen. The many things I know. But not this - this part of him - that he felt this way from the beginning. That he saw me so clearly so soon. 

I walk beside him, between him and the sea, and touch my fingers to his. He is cold and I am warm. He feels empty and I am overfilled. 

His gaze stutters, staggers, towards me. “Cole?”

“You can be a kite.”

He blinks, breathes, barks a surprised laugh. “That's… generous, but-“

“No.” I tell him, “It’s the opposite.”

“...opposite?” 

_ Selfish _ , he thinks.  _ Monstrous _ , he thinks.  _ Devious and dastardly. _ I touch my lips to the tips of his fingers and, shaking, his breath slips to mingle in the salt air. His eyes are chasms, quaking Fadestorms drowning in darkness expanding. 

“...don’t-“ he whispers.

He is sea salt, sun sweat. “I know.”

“Exactly,” he worries. Heart beat flurries, “That’s exactly-“ 

I bring his hand down, away, allay his tripping tongue. Twine like basket reeds the fingers between us. “Telling me what to do because you fear that you’re telling me what to do.”

He blinks. “No, I-“

“No?” I smile, squeezing his fingers between my own, “Cook your fish.”


	3. the art of becoming a kite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PWP. Because Cole’s idea of intimacy is different.

“You know,” I say as I pull in a crab pot and count my catch. Time. Peace. “You have to eat, too.”

“Not those,” he says. His eyes are on the waves. A month ago, we left the mainland on a stolen dinghy and paddled to this island. Still, he watches the path we traveled. 

“What’s wrong with crab?”

“I like them,” he murmurs, resting his chin on my shoulder. 

“You like them so you won’t eat them.” I squint at him, “You have crab friends, is that it?”

“Yes.” His fingers brush the back of my arm. “They are sometimes like spiders.”

“Ugh, kill them all,” I mutter, tossing the emptied trap back into the sea. He is still touching me, lightly. He is always touching me these days. Tiny snaps of heat where his fingers make contact. Barely anything. I might have called them absent-minded, only nothing Cole does lacks intention. He is always up to something. I fail to suppress a shiver. “Cole.” He tilts his head, shade obscuring his features. 

“I need to go.”

I study the sea-spiders writhing inside the sack. The way my stomach twists and churns. “Now?”

His shade envelops me, cooling my cheeks, and he presses his too-warm summer cheek to mine. “I know.”

I can’t ask him to stay. I can’t. I close my eyes and focus on the smoothness of his cheek, the heat of his fingertips. “You’ll come back?” I whisper. It’s less a question than a plea.

“Always.”

“Soon?” 

Hell. Silence. 

“Cole...?” I inquire of the sea, the wind, the craggy cliffs, the soggy shore, the stubborn trees. He doesn’t answer. Neither do they.

* * *

He knows what I know. 

For the first few days after he told me, I tortured myself over that. For the days following those, I ran through everything I could think, had thought, could remember, writing every fragment down. 

It’s a lie. I’m sure of that now. He doesn’t know what I know. He knows more than I know. Far more. Secrets folded into his unfathomable mind like hidden gems in stone. Implacable and waiting.

My heart in my throat, thudding in my ears like a drum. Fear. Waking to the sounds of my own screams drowned out by ocean storms. 

Blood on my tongue, raw throated, half awake and throttling invisible monsters. 

Every morning, the sea is still here. Windswept. Still as a mirror, reflecting the sky. Wild. 

Every morning, the cliffs still curve the winds back on the trees, bending them over like elderly monks in prayer. 

No ghosts here but myself. No wanderers. No survivors.

No distractions.

I wonder: is the sea reflecting the sky or is the sky was reflecting the sea?

I wander the shore, shuffling the sand beneath my feet. 

I don’t remember when I stopped screaming. I don’t remember the moment or the day. There was… time. Yes. Pure time. Or timelessness?

Light and dark. 

Sea and shore. 

There is everything to fear. So there is nothing. 

Mythal is nowhere near me, answering no questions. So she is everywhere, offering all knowledge. 

I am dangerous. Terrifying. Exactly as I’m supposed to be. 

He knows more than I know. He always has.

And, sometimes, he is here. 

* * *

Patchwork and pale, watching the whales - I cannot summon surprise. He isn’t always here when I want him, but he finds me when I’m ready to be found. He always has. Hasn’t he? I am beginning to see patterns again. In everything. I darn my memories together using scraps. I read whatever he brings me. I drop my sack and join him on the cliff. He shifts, barely, and our arms align. Shoulder to shoulder, connecting through contact, our fingers twine. 

Later, the campfire crackles and the sea hushes, I spit squid ink into a small vial and write more rattled reflections with the blood of the sea.

“She is part of you. Always.”

I look up to find him watching. Close. Closer than I’d paid mind. His thumb brushes my lip, catching my breath. His thumb is black from the ink. And when I kiss him, his lips are stained with it. Maybe he’s right. I am part of the sea and it is part of me. And both of us are liable to swallow him whole. 

He is still. Swaying inches from me. Stained. Breath warm like gentle sunsets, though he has no need for air. He closes his eyes, as though he could hide behind those bruised, paper thin petals. 

“Cole.” My voice is a whisper and still too loud. He is black and blue, gentle as crushed violets and soft as a lamb’s ear. He is the most dangerous person I’ve ever known. “Was that- is it-“

He touches his nose to mine, tip to tip, breathing unnecessarily. 

“What do you want?” I ask, teetering on the cliff of my will. 

Heat flutters at my chin and I am undone. Later, I will come back and try to dust the sand from the wet ink on the page. But in this instant, the pen and ink and paper and memories are forgotten as surely as if he’d wiped them from my mind. I am only hands. I am only lips. I am only flesh. He is…

lips curve beneath mine, opening, and he is… 

press him into the sand and he pulls me with him. His palms slide up under my shirt, shredding my sanity. He peels the cloth over my head and tips me sideways, farther from the fire. Smirking. His lips stained by mine. They leave traces as they move, mouthing, over my chest. I sink my hands into his hair, shuddering laughter escaping between panted gasps. “Let me in,” he mouths the words against my pounding heart and I’m unsure if he spoke aloud. There is a drum inside me, thrumming, and I am helpless. “Let me in,” I hear his voice this time, feel the sound vibrate against my skin.

“Yes-“ ‘Dorian’, I think for an instant and then I am full, stretched thin, as my hands empty to grasping air and Cole sinks into me. Like water. Like quicksand. Enveloped. I can feel every inch of him press and stretch, turning. His fingers flex inside mine. His tongue curling against and within. The muscles of his hands and legs like an echo of my own. His lashes flutter against my cheeks. His toes curl inside my calves. I am so full, stretched open on summer wind, and there is an inexpressible delicacy to that state. 

I remember this. This lung inside lung, heart beside heart, thundering breathlessness. But then I had been filled with darkness, drowning. Then I had been trying to lose myself and disappear. Now… “ ** _Let me,”_ ** His words, exhaled through my lips.

Every quiet, shuddering detail is etched onto the inside of my skin. I writhe there, in the screaming ecstasy of shared space, shifting, slipping, seaswept. Then his tongue flicks, just barely, against the back of our teeth. It traces our palette, curling to gently prod the ridge. Every minute sensation sets my heart to thrumming, my hips grinding a pit into the sand. There is a low, endless groan beneath the churning sea and crackle of kindling, emanating from somewhere low in my gut, and I can’t stop. I don’t want to. I can feel the full, throbbing shape of his cock inside my own and my mind empties except for sensation. 

He is curled into my skin like a fox hibernating in a burrow. A whimpering, breathless, orgasming burrow. Wave upon wave of pleasure pull and tug, dragging me under, under, under into mindless whisperings of “yes”. 

When I open my eyes, he is there. Quiet. Tending the fire. His chin is resting on his knees, flames reflecting in his eyes, ink still a memory on his lips. 

He seems brighter than the flames. Shimmering with inscrutable lightness. I am limbless, weak as a kitten, sprawled in sand. 

He smiles. Smirks. Smiles. “I told you,” he murmurs.

“Hmmm?” I manage.

“You can be a kite.” He blinks deceptively innocent cornflower blue eyes. “I can do that.” He pauses. “I want to.”


	4. moon to sun, rise

He is scattered and soft as the mists coming in from the sea. I’ve seen so many versions of him now: sunny, spastic, furious, afraid, hopeful, hungry… This time, I know, is special. This time, in this place, is ours and ours alone.

I brush my fingers through his hair as he reads through his notes, combing the damp strands of white in the moonlight. He leans back just enough to show me that he enjoys my touch, as if I didn’t already know. He smells like woodsmoke and sea. He churns and turns like a storm. 

“Are they… okay?” he asks quietly. His recovery, necessary though it is, weighs on him. 

“They will be.”

Aran sighs, absently pressing a hand to his chest. The ache is less these days. The beat regular. But he isn’t whole. He won’t be, not for some time; there is so far for him to go before that can be. I rest my cheek on his head and wait for his held breath to ease from him like an outgoing tide. “I think,” he begins quietly. “I think, soon, we can go back.” But we can’t. “I feel… better, now, you know? Not  _ better _ , but… better than I was.”

“You are.”

“It won’t be the same,” he continues. “Maybe ever. But there’s still more to do. There’s still… Mythal didn’t save me so that I could spend my days in peace, after all.” 

She didn’t save him at all. He doesn’t know that yet. I watch the stars that have been counting down the time I have left with him. I braid his hair into simple plaits, watch his eyes close with the pleasure of sensation. I can give him this much. This peace. There is something in my eyes, salt and water. Rain and mist. Hot against my cheeks and collecting in his hair. 

“I miss them,” he whispers. 

“Yes.” I will miss him. I can feel the outline of him inside of me, the place that will be emptied. Absent. 

“...I miss him.” He shivers beneath my fingers. As though this is a revelation. 

“Yes.” Of course he does. Dorian is the underscore to his every thought. A low, resilient beat alongside his heart.

“I’m sorry.” 

What I could say to change that... I can’t. He’s asked me not to. He might not believe me if I told him. “Yes.” He is.

“Cole.” He turns, pressing his cheek to my palm to study me. “That doesn’t mean- What I mean to say is, I think- I think I might very well love you.”

“Yes.”

He brushes his fingers down the side of my face, dipping into the hollows beneath my eyes. “Are you… crying?”

“Yes,” I tell him. I didn’t know I could. But the word fits. Crying. Leaking. 

“...Something’s coming, isn’t it.”

I look into his eyes. Windows into the place I came from. The Fade. So many fear it. For a long time, I couldn’t understand why they did. It had fearful things in it, yes, but it was also populated with beauty, wisdom, possibility… Now, I see, through tear-stained windows, that it isn’t the Fade that they fear. It’s losing the things of this world that they’ve grown to love. Even knowing what will come, I feel that same fear. “Yes.”

“Soon?”

“Yes.”

“Stop saying that,” he whispers. His lips are cold. His tongue is hot. “I love you,” he tells me, pressing the words into my mouth syllable by syllable. “I do. I love you.”

“Yes,” I agree, letting him gather me to him, against him. He cannot blend us as I can, but he tries, and his attempts… are pleasant. “For tonight.”

“Forever.”

“Show me.” And he does.

* * *

“It’s me, isn’t it?” The stars are blurring out of sight as the red-tinged morning light begins to burn. We are tangled beside the ashes of the evening’s fire, the grit of the sand sticking to his sweat. I wish that I could inhabit the sand as I have inhabited him. That I could bind to his flesh and go with him from this world to the next. “I’m leaving again.”

I nod.

“It’s strange… knowing it, I can almost feel it coming. Like a storm on the horizon.” He looks lonely already.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to go,” he presses his face into my hair, holding tight. 

I don’t want him to, either. I want to keep him here, filling him like wind, braiding us together and apart, like reeds, and by will alone deny the path ahead of him. “It doesn’t matter what we want,” I tell him, lips to his ear. 

“Cole-“

“You’ll need your armor.” The outline of him in my heart tears as I extricate myself from his arms. Together, we dress him in his armor. Missing ties. Fumbling buckles. 

“Fuck. Shit. Fuck.” He is well-spoken. He is fading now, blinking as he blurs. I bundle his notes into a waterproof case in his pack. Furs and fish. Knives and needles. A book of poems stiff with salt air.

“Keep this hidden for as long as you can,” I take his hand between my palms, carefully binding the anchor with leather and cloth. “You’re not alone. I’m there. When you find me, I’ll know you. He won’t, not at first, but he’ll be with you, too. Given time.” His eyes reflect the morning’s warmth and the Fade’s tempest, shaded with shadows and exhaustion. I brush the bruises of his bafflement. “Don’t forget,” I tell him as the torrent of time tugs. 

He seeks, peeks, “Cole?”

I touch our lips together the way he likes, “When you get there, drop the pack and dodge.” 

“When I get where?”

“Stay alive. Whatever you do.” I press his daggers into his hands. “So long as you live, you’ll come back to me.”

“What-”

I touch the air where he has been and listen to the voices on the wind. 

In an instant, he is gone and then… Home. He’s home again. They’ll find him soon enough. And I must find Hawke. 

The hawks are menace and mercury, but they will heed the message. They must. She loathes that she listens to me as if any hope she might find glistening will burn her if she touches it. He hates being her shadow, but shadows her still. Steady. 

Shadows are the most loyal, after all. 


End file.
